ReTales

When our childhoods come back, the natural problems of memory distort the image to make it wrong . Think of how many nostalgic memories you have that you know, deep down, didn't happen the way you remember. Maybe it's one lie you told yourself. Maybe three or four. Maybe the whole thing is made up. I don't blame you. I had a good childhood but if all that people have of your own is a fantasy then all I can offer is a hope that your abuser, whether they're a person or a system, dies and burns in Hell. I have lived my life so focused on nostalgia that my day-to-day living has become full of holes in the present, just as there are holes all throughout my past. The future, that sea of infinite possible timelines, is probably nothing more than a Sea of Holes. And here we have the first personal node— Yellow Submarine was the movie I watched the most growing up. I had an LSD-soaked childhood and it braced me for a similar adulthood. The hippies who were the firs...

Y'know, working this job: I don't think I've gone through a single day where someone hasn't interrupted my reading on a break. Like. That's how I spend my breaks. I eat, I read. I go to the bathroom if it's available, which it is occasionally. But I read. I read as much as I can. I read whole websites worth of short stories and reviews, I bring books in when I'm confident that no one will try to rob me. And every. Single. Time. I am interrupted. Sometimes it's a forgivable attempt to build up friendship, albeit a misguided one. The guy who sat way too close to me, and folded his newspaper on top of my book to ask me to do a crossword with him? He was just trying to be nice. The bagger who rants at me unbroken and breathless for all fifteen minutes about all the different computer parts he's bought? He assumes I'm interested, and I'm too anxious to tell him otherwise. But sometimes the interruption gets ridiculous. I remember once when I...